Spoon: 3.2 Soup (Patreon)

Preface

Happy New Year! You know, that one that actually matters for us Asians. All hail the bunny!

Soup 3.2

Aaron Fulan
Petalburg Woods, Hoenn Region

I leaned against a tree, panting and hacking my lungs out. On the upside, we weren’t being chased by ornery taillow anymore. Most wild pokémon didn’t pick fights with trainers in “horde” formats like this because they understood that most trainers had more pokémon on hand than what they could see. But taillow were gutsy fuckers. They were effectively the Florida-men of the Hoenn wilds, willing to challenge damn near anyone and anything.

Yes, we were there first. Yes, beating us wouldn’t make the berries grow back any faster. Yes, this was likely only one of half a dozen bushes they kept tabs on for food. Yes, Artoria had just one-shot their leader with laughable ease. Yes, I could have had other pokémon in my pocket besides the ones who’d just gorged themselves into an inept stupor.

Did any of that matter to them? Fuck. No. Those gutsy fuckers gave zero fucks unless there was a more mature swellow to reign in their near-suicidal forwardness.

So, I ran. I ran like a little bitch until I could taste the iron-rich flavor of blood with every gasp of air I forced into my lungs. I ran until they finally got sick of chasing us, or got distracted by something shiny.

Have I mentioned I loathe taillow?

I tossed Jeanne’s pokéball into the air and watched her materialize.

“Maa!!!” she cheered, tiny hooves thrust towards the sky in salute to the sun. It would’ve been cute had I not been exceedingly cross with my two pokémon. That she immediately choked on her own cud and curled into a woolen ball didn’t make me feel better… much…

I plopped Artoria down and glared at them both. She had mostly recovered, if only by virtue of having emptied her stomach down the side of my shirt. “Well? What have we learned today?”

They straightened at my harsh tone. I watched them squirm and shuffle. Good. They deserved this.

The two of them began to whisper something between them before Artoria sighed. She had clearly been nominated as their spokespokémon, if only because she was the only one I could fully understand.

“What do you have to say for yourselves?”

‘Ah… Umm… We may have overeaten… a little…’

I looked pointedly down at my ruined shirt and leveled a thoroughly unamused glare at my starter. “A little? Really?”

‘In our defense… Hunger is the enemy…?’

‘So are wild pokémon.’

‘O-Our apologies, my lord…’

“Do either of you know why I’m upset?”

Jeanne pawed the dirt. “Maa… reep?”

‘I… I soiled your shirt…’

“No, that’s not the problem. The shirt can be washed. Hell, Tate and Liza did more when they were younger. What do you think would have happened if those taillow were better?” I demanded to shamed silence. “We might be dead. Barring that, they could have just flown off with the bag, which might I remind you, includes your mega stone, Artoria.”

“Kir…” she looked down. ‘I have no excuse.’

I pulled off my shirt and tossed it into the laundry compartment of my hammerspace bag. There was a little hand-cranked washing machine I could use to get the vomit out. I then passed around a glass of water so my pokémon could gargle their mouths.

When we were mostly clean, I tugged them into a hug. “Us escaping was the best-case scenario. We could have all gotten hurt, especially if the pokémon that stumbled on us were more dangerous than taillow.”

“Kiii…”

“Maaa…

“Playing is okay. Bickering is okay. It’s encouraged even. I want you two to fight and argue and figure out compromises to get along better. I want you two to make silly challenges because they’ll become cherished memories when you’re older. But there is a time and place for that. Restraint is important too. Do you understand?”

“Mareep,” Jeanne nodded, sulking. I didn’t doubt she’d bounce back to her usual chipper self tomorrow.

‘I understand, my lord. I grossly overstepped. I am the elder. I should have known better. I should only have indulged her to a point.’

‘And where was that point?’ I asked curiously.

‘Last night?’

‘Are you asking me or telling me?’

‘Telling you…? Telling you.’

‘No. I enjoyed watching you two gorge yourselves,’ I admitted to her. ‘It was fun until you decided to overeat so much that you couldn’t protect yourselves.’

‘Ah…’

‘You should have restrained yourself, even if it meant letting her have the win. What is a swordsman who cannot draw their sword?’

‘Not a swordsman,’ she said, shame flowing through the bond. ‘I am disgraced…’

‘No,’ I chided. ‘You are learning. And that is enough.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

I reached out and ruffled both their heads. They did need to be punished still, lesson learned or no. “Since you love oran berries so much, that’s all you’re getting to eat. Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner.”

“Maa!”

“Kir!”

“For a week.”

I took smug satisfaction at their stricken looks. I didn’t know a kirlia could turn green.

X

In the end, as funny as their faces were, I caved after three days. For one, they’d learned their lesson. Even looking at an oran berry killed their appetite. Great, because that stuff was actually kind of neat when sliced in thin discs, soaked in a sweet vinegar, and used as a relish-like topping on my sandwiches alongside some farfetch’d breast, onion, and arugula.

And wasn’t that interesting in itself. It always caught me a little by surprise to find some pokémon show up in the supermarket meat aisle. Regular animals existed, but shared the plate as consumables. As far as I could tell a farfetch’d breast was a bit meatier and gamier than regular duck breast, though I wasn’t sure that was necessarily better. I’d gotten it out of curiosity, but I didn’t think I’d buy it again.

Secondly, and just as important, I was quickly growing tired of hunting down oran berry bushes. My stock had run out on day two.

The upside to the massive chewing out I gave them was that they threw themselves with renewed vigor into their training.

‘Jeanne’s really gotten the hang of Electro Ball,’ I mused as I watched her battle a passing lombre. Her Electro Ball easily overwhelmed its Water Gun, each orb landing with enough impact to scatter the water.

The lombre lunged with Scratch, but Jeanne was more physically fit and dodged out of the way before retaliating with a vicious Take Down. Her general reluctance towards close-quarters combat was no longer anywhere to be found.

“Lombre!” it cried as it sailed through the air.

It landed on a tree trunk, digging in with its claws to keep its balance. Then, hopping onto the forest floor, it began a dance that made me feel woozy. It wove back and forth, swinging its arms like a carefree drunkard, each step sending out subtle pulses of aura in staggered patterns. That I could sense the attack at all was a testament to my growth.

The vestibular sense was governed primarily by otoliths in the ear. How was it then that a dance caused a loss of balance in everyone else? Was it some kind of sympathetic effect that the lombre trained itself to overcome?

Didn’t matter, fuck science, just one more proof that pokémon didn’t give a damn about conventional logic.

“Teeter Dance!” I shouted, but the warning came too late. The entire world seemed to lurch back and forth, as though I was on a boat. “Jeanne, Protect!”

Whatever it was planning next, I wanted her to hunker down. She barely managed to raise the shield in time, a glowing, teal hemisphere surrounding her as the lombre seized its chance with a powerful stream of bubbles. They crashed like a staccato of raindrops, except each exploded with considerably greater force. I could see why they’d be disorienting if faced head on.

I tugged on the psychic bond and flooded my body with psychic aura as I’d been practicing. When that wasn’t enough, Artoria lent me a surge of power that helped stabilize my senses. It wasn’t a full cure, I still wanted to sit down, but it did get me back into the fight.

But if a disruption in aura was enough to break me out of it, then…

“Focus, Jeanne!” I cried, “Listen to my voice! Shock yourself!”

“Mareep!”

She didn’t hesitate for a moment. Her fur glowed an incandescent yellow before some of the charge soaked back into her hide. When she next opened her eyes, they were resolute and ready to dish out some payback.

“Good. Cotton Spore into Electro Ball.”

“Mareep!” With a bleating battle cry, she filled the clearing with a ludicrous number of woolen spores, each charged with enough static to stick to absolutely anything.

“Lombre!” it panicked. No longer able to move as it wished, it could only stand with eyes wide open as Jeanne hopped onto the side of a tree and launched herself into the air.

She twisted like a cat before striking with a downward flip. An orb of condensed electricity struck down from the orange gem-like bulb in her tail, flung as though from a sling. It crashed like a baseball into the lombre’s face, sending it blasting back and knocking it out cold.

Jeanne landed and raised her hooves towards the sky in her usual cheer. “Mareep! Ma-“

Amidst her celebration, a brilliant white light covered her. I’d only seen it once before so far, but it was one any trainer worth his salt would recognize in a heartbeat: the light of evolution.

When it faded, I found myself staring at a bipedal, pink sheep… thing… I wasn’t quite sure if she qualified as an ovine anymore. It was honestly a little hard to describe. Jeanne had switched her blue fur for pink. Even her horns had switched to a pink and black striped color as though the keratin itself had taken on a different pigment. She now stood on two legs and all four limbs ended in toes as opposed to hooves. Just about the only thing sheep-like about here was the wool over the crown of her head and around her neck. Strangely, the orange gem-like bulb on her tail had become an azure blue.

I laughed and picked up the slightly heavier flaaffy in my arms. “Jeanne! Look at you! You evolved!”

“Flaa? Flaaffy!” she cried, as though finally realizing that yes, she had indeed changed.

“Ooh! I’m so proud of you!”

“Flaaffy flaaf!”

“I know. It was a long time coming, but you evolved. I said were close, didn’t I?”

“Flaaf.”

I felt a small weight teleport to my back. “Kirlia. Kir. Kirlia?”

“Flaaffy?”

“Kirlia. Lii… Lia?”

“Flaaffy, flaaf. Feee.”

I set my two pokémon down and let them have their moment. I walked up to the lombre and nudged it awake.

“Lom?”

“Here,” I said, proffering an oran berry. My own pokémon were thoroughly disgusted with its like anyhow so I figured I may as well give it away. “Thanks for duking it out with my mareep. You were exactly what she needed to evolve.”

“Lombre…” it groaned, a paw over its face.

“Take the berry. It’ll make you feel better.”

“Lombre,” it said. Its voice was strange, like a weird mix of a quack and a chirp, if birds had vocal cords. Especially weird since lombre weren’t avian as far as I knew. Still, it took the berry gratefully. It then waddled off, grumbling something or other like a middle-aged man.

I decided to set up camp then and there. There was too much to learn now that Jeanne evolved. What followed was a lengthy training session to see just where she stood now.

The answer was that she hadn’t changed much.

To be expected, really. Most pokémon didn’t magically learn new moves upon evolution like some did in the games. Most did not gain flight, grow gills, or develop a secondary typing and Jeanne was no different. Artoria didn’t change much either.

At the same time, everything she knew became… tighter…? Was that the right word?

Jeanne wasn’t much taller, barely three feet tall now, but she was more compact, with lithe, toned muscle that wasn’t there before. I had her run through her moves and her “casting time,” for lack of a better term, was much shorter. That second’s delay between attacks was almost entirely gone now. Her Thunder Shocks looked like bursts of semi-automatic gunfire. Her Shock Waves were close behind. Electro Ball was quicker to charge and could hold its shape over longer distances.

Best of all was Electric Terrain. Its range had improved greatly alongside her general storage capacity.  Mareep had trouble building up a charge inside their bodies as opposed to just around their wool, but not so for flaaffy. Instead of a mere six feet, the move could reach a full fifteen feet in radius, more than double what she had before. Since she’d only newly evolved, I fully expected that radius to expand dramatically as we trained.

On the other hand, Cotton Spore suffered somewhat. It was a bit of a mixed bag. Less wool meant she had to invest more  aura to stimulate growth. It did mean she had better control over the move, a give and take in terms of advantages and disadvantages. I figured it wouldn’t be long before she could grow enough spores to drown the battlefield and smiled because our contest routine would be a cakewalk now.

The biggest change wasn’t any singular move, but her shift in posture.

Jeanne had thumbs now. Barely, they were more like stubby little nubs, but she could grip with them. Becoming bipedal also meant her forelimbs were now arms, capable of far more precise movements than she could perform while pointing with her snout as a mareep. The longer tail also helped. No longer did she have to flip her entire quadrupedal body around to launch attacks from her tail-bulb. Now, she could flick the thing like a whip and I made a note to look into Iron Tail sometime in the future.

After testing, just for kicks, I had Jeanne focus an Electro Ball while standing in a slanted stance. Her paws were held a few inches apart and tucked into her hip in a classic Kamehameha pose.

“Good, good,” I encouraged her. “Yeah, just like that. Charge. As tight as you can.”

“Flaaf,” she grunted in exertion. An enormous electrical charge built up between her paws as the orb became brighter and brighter.

“Now release! Kamehameha!”

“Flaaaaffff!” she roared, thrusting the orb forward on both paws.

The Electro Ball shot forward like a bullet, expanding midflight from a small pinprick to a pulsing orb of power as large as my face. It collided with a nearby tree and blasted clean through, sending a shower of splinters around the clearing. I held up Artoria and she cast a lazy Protect to deflect any coming our way.

‘My lord, should you really name an attack after a children’s cartoon?’

‘I should. The meme-gods demand it.’

‘Wasn’t the original Kamehameha a beam? Jeanne’s Electro Ball is an orb.’

I offered her a mental shrug. ‘Details.’

‘Besides, “Turtle Destruction Wave” is hardly appropriate considering she is not a turtle nor is her attack a wave.’

‘Hmm… You do have a point. Maybe Hadouken would be better?’ I mused as I absently scratched Jeanne’s wool. She still had the same sweet spot behind her ears.

I felt Artoria dig through my memories for the reference. ‘Wave-Motion Fist? That is… better… I still don’t think we should try to recreate attacks from children’s games. It feels... immature.’

‘Nonsense. Just wait ‘til you have your Excali-spoon.’

‘I am not calling it that.’

‘Why not?’

‘It sounds stupid.’

‘Bah, what is dignity before the glory of the spoon?’

‘No.’

‘Spoon-caliber?’

‘Definitely not.’

‘We’ll see. Besides, Mana Edge and Mana Burst are both names taken from the original Artoria. Well, it was called “Prana Burst,” but same difference.’

She huffed in annoyance. ‘My lord is a chuuni.’

I laughed. ‘Oh, hey, you finally used that word right. See? We’re all chuuni. We’re a team of chuuni. And, in a world where the power of friendship is a tangible force, our chuuni-ness will propel us to greatness.’

I could literally feel her resignation through our empathic bond. ‘Very well, my lord… if you say so.’

And thus, Jeanne learned the Hadouken.

X

That evening, after a dinner of risotto prepared with a medley of wild mushrooms and dried currants, Jeanne stood across from Artoria. As always with pokémon, the best way for Jeanne to get accustomed to her new body was combat.

I stood in the middle of the clearing between the two so as to not favor either side. In my hand was an éclair, the last one I packed. Thanks to the wonders of hammerspace technology, it was still almost as good as when I first bought it and the creamy pastry was a favorite of both pokémon.

“Alright, this’ll be a spar. Victor gets the last éclair. Jeanne, ready?”

“Flaaffy!”

“Artoria?”

‘Of course, my lord.’

‘Wait for her to decide the pace then react. This is about helping her get used to her new body in a fight.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Thanks, you’re the best. I’ve got another éclair in my bag.’

‘That’s not the last one?’

‘No, but she’ll fight harder with it on the line.’

‘My lord is devious.’

“Now,” I called. “Go!”

Jeanne, flashy as ever, immediately goes for a Hadouken, Charge followed up with Electro Ball in an all-out burst. Artoria rolled her eyes and slid into a defensive stance. Her spoon glowed with the now-familiar sheen of Light Screen.

Then, with a bleating roar, Jeanne’s attack rocketed towards my starter.

She caught it in the blink of an eye, nabbing the orb of electrical death in the head of her spoon like she’d scooped up the oddish back at the trainer school. Then, in the same, fluid motion, she flicked it to the side, leaving it to sail behind her and through some poor tree.

“Kirlia, kirlia kir,” she chided. If I knew her as well as I thought I did, it was a lecture about skill and technique overcoming raw power.

That only seemed to fire up my lamb even more. A corona of white-hot resolve surrounded her as she stamped her feet into the dirt. The brilliant yellow of Electric Terrain filled the surrounding clearing.

She then swept her tail forward as the gem shone brightly. The Flash caught Artoria by surprise, leaving Jeanne enough time to draw upon the terrain and launch a barrage of Shock Waves. I counted Twenty-seven bolts in all, each with far more force behind them than when she’d been a mareep.

Artoria had her own ace however, something she’d been cultivating for weeks since her evolution: The kirlia stage of a ralts’ life was roughly when they started to develop precognitive abilities. It was something she’d yet to use in combat, but I’d been training it with her consistently over the past five weeks. Whenever we merged senses, I’d look away while tossing a pebble in her direction, forcing her to predict where I’d strike from without relying on her other senses.

The constant harassment we called training paid dividends now. Even without sight, she twisted out of the line of fire, dodging more than half of them before rushing forward with a flurry of cuts fueled by Mana Edge.

Jeanne reacted by trying to slow down her advance with Cotton Spore, only to have Artoria teleport behind her. The retaliatory strike knocked her clean out of the Electric Terrain.

“Kirlia?” Artoria trilled with concern.

“Flaaffy!” Jeanne bleated back, rolling to her feet.

Artoria nodded with a proud smile and brandished her spoon. They charged towards each other at some unspoken signal.

Jeanne herself had grown a fair bit. Though she wasn’t much faster as a flaffy, she was significantly stronger and more dexterous with her arms. She also augmented the Take Downs and Shock Waves with a hefty mix of Protect. Her larger size and increased stamina allowed her to take a more defensive style in close quarters and, though she didn’t win, was able to tire Artoria far more than she could before.

Author’s Note

Actually had this punishment before from my parents. Fed me nothing but sweets for a few days. Couldn’t look at a Hershey’s bar without feeling sick. Funny, but I still have no idea what I did to deserve it. All I know now is that I don’t have much of a sweet tooth.

On another note, try peaches and burrata on a sandwich. It’ll change your life. Or at least your sandwich game. Bonus points if you scorch the peach slices a bit until the surface is nice and caramelized.

Is Aaron too much of a chuuni? Nah. No such thing.